Category Archives: Bright Ideas

If you don’t already do this, don’t just concentrate on celebrating the special holidays of the year with the one you love. Don’t worry about whether he gets you something for Valentine’s Day, your birthday, your anniversary. Wouldn’t you be happier if he thinks about you and tries to make you happy MOST days of the year?

This doesn’t happen accidentally. It starts with YOU. When YOU show HIM that he’s special, thank him when he does something he doesn’t have to do that saves you time, effort, worry, he might return the way you make him feel in kind.

Yes, there are days you chase him around the house with a fly swatter when he’s being obnoxious. Yes, there are days you think about how satisfying it would be to bash him – just a bit – with a frying pan. Yes, there are days your feelings are hurt. Yes, there are days you want to yell until you’re hoarse. Yes, you might enjoy some time to yourself. That’s called living with someone who ALSO has wants/needs/ideas/hopes/dreams. Those feelings go both ways.

It’s up to YOU to see that the GOOD feelings/warm thoughts/melts-you-into-a-puddle acts go both ways.

I just finished spreading two of the four large leaf bags of mulch I made recently. I wore Targa 2 “Racing” Goggles we had on hand while I did it, not wanting a repeat of the eye scratches I got when I made the mulch a little over a week ago.

The next step is cleaning out more brick flower planters. THEN I can probably distribute the rest of the mulch.

Exciting, huh.

Actually, I DO find it exciting that I can make my own mulch, cleaning up many of the leaves in the yard as I do, and not have to pay for bag after small bag of mulch I used to buy at the local hardware store each fall. As I remember, it was about $3.00 or so per bag, and I used about 20 of them one year. So I’m saving money, cleaning up, recycling, and mulching my plants for the winter!

And, between the weeding and cleaning out of my square foot garden, plus distributing the two 39 gallon trash bags of mulch, I’ve gotten a good amount of exercise and fresh air today.

If the weather is cooperative tomorrow, I’ll try to get more planters cleaned out, working my way around the yard.

Since working outside today wouldn’t be pleasant, I’m switching to indoor things, happy to have a warm, dry home.

I’m going to make a beef stew in the crock pot for tonight, serving it with low-carb garlic bread. THEN I’m looking forward to playing in my art room this afternoon. I’m still working on Christmas presents for friends, plus I have a couple of ideas rattling around in my head I’d like to try.

My friend Jane posted this on Facebook, tagging me because she knew I would absolutely LOVE it. I went nuts over it immediately, and then my mind boggled when I realized how LARGE it is. Those are PEOPLE around the edges, and STORES. Where most malls would use the space for a food court or something, these people created real beauty for all to enjoy. What a lot of talent went into this! If you look carefully, you can see 5 men laying in more glorious purple flowers on the right of the picture. Just beautiful.

Like this:

Change is difficult. It’s SO much easier to simply ‘keep on keepin’ on.’

Change means leaving your comfort zone, getting up off your duff, doing things might be scary, challenging, even unpleasant sometimes. But if you stop making the choice to take the chance to make a change, you stop living. You gradually quietly implode, your world becoming smaller and smaller until it’s gone.

Sometimes I think my husband is on a mission to make us UNcomfortable – with WAAAAY too many changes at one time.

One example of this is our CHOICE to cancel our subscription to DISH TV. Living in the sticks outside a small town in Arkansas, we’re very lucky to have two satellite TV choices: Dish and DirecTV. Now we’ve tried both. Both offered a lot of stations in the package we chose, but we couldn’t JUST get the channels we wanted, and we had to pay extra for the channels that weren’t included, plus the rental of the DVR, plus a charge for HD, plus……over $98/month.

So now we’re free of that, and that’s a good thing. BUT now we have to learn how to use Roku, Hulu, AmazonPrimeTV, and about 4 other choices right off the bat that all sound the same to me. Nothing is relaxing, mindless anymore. That’s a good thing for us, too, but it isn’t enjoyable at the moment. We had to order another Roku remote, because I can’t take the idea of my husband being in charge of what we’re watching, how loud the sound is, etc. Now, instead of leaving a news channel on, buffering it for about an hour so we can skip through commercials, plus being able to hit “DVR” and see a list of stuff taped, ready to be watched, we have to figure out how to get the Roku service on (particularly if we watched a DVD the night before), then go to the service that provides the channel or program we want to see, then figure out (again) how to get the sound on.

We’re having to adjust to the fact that you can’t pause a show. You can mute the sound, but you can’t pause. So, if you get a phone call, need to get up to do something, get a call of nature, etc., you either miss whatever happened while you were gone or watch it again. We have to mute for commercials, although we’re paying a bit extra for services that offer no commercials.

Instead of $98/month, we’re paying $36. We have almost all of the channels and programs we wanted. I’m finding that watching 24 hour news programs was stressful. Since they all hashed the same news with their unique spin or opinions, we aren’t missing much. Between my online news and the ones we watch now, we know pretty much what’s going on.

We’re still researching to find out what’s being offered or updated. We’re still working together to figure out how to make things work. We’re having to strain our brains, rather than mindlessly staring at the tube.

We’re reading and talking and playing with our animals more.

So we made the CHOICE to take a CHANCE so our lives have CHANGED – for the better.

This cute thing arrived in a big box a few days ago. My husband put it together for me, finishing it yesterday. I’m not sure what it’s really called, but I’m calling it my garden scooter. There is a string with a handle on the front to pull it out where you like it (such as working in the trio of brick planters between our front yard and the driveway I was working on the other day). As you’re sitting on it, you can raise up just a bit and scoot it easily in whatever direction you would like. The seat turns sideways. There is a basket on the back for tools, plus the black think under the seat will hold gloves, tools, etc.

Now I can garden in much more comfort as I work my way around the yard!

About 6 months or so ago we changed our Internet to WOW (World of Wireless) which gives us our service from a radio tower on the ridge line across the valley from us. We are VERY happy with the change, realizing we’ll probably never live to see the really high speed, high capacity service out in the sticks.

Lately we’ve been researching cutting the cord to their TV service. For a long time it was the best we could get. There was basically Dish and DirecTV, and we’ve been on both over the years. Our present service costs over $98.00/month. We think this is outrageous, but it was the best we could do, until now.

We started reading articles that encouraged us to look around. We got a TiVo to get OTA (over-the-air) channels with an antenna. THEN we found that we could use all kinds of services that gave us almost everything we have now at a MUCH lower price. I had never heard of most of these things: Roku, Hulu, AmazonPrimeTV, and another one I can’t remember the name of. It looks like our total cost per month will eventually be around $36.00.

We just sold the TiVo today on Ebay, getting enough money back to be reasonable. We will soon stop the subscription to Dish. We will either change our NetFlix subscription to stream only or stop it altogether.

We’ll have to change some habits, but that’s good. We’re in the process now of building a spreadsheet that tells us which service to access to be able to watch the shows we like.

This is a fun, MUCH less expensive, new way (for us) to get entertainment that doesn’t make us cringe every month!

Like this:

I found this a long time ago and neglected to get the source. There is a signature across the the image between the leaf and the butterfly on the right, but I can’t make it out. Sorry. I think this is really, really nice.

I hope you’re having a good morning, too.

The ham radio operators are having the 2nd day of their annual field day today in Bell Park, Greenwood, Arkansas. Sometime yesterday a 24-hour contest began to see who could get the most contacts in a 24 hour period at a certain bandwidth. Last year there were about six different bandwidths represented. This contest is across the WORLD. Each operator uses his ham radio call sign, making contact with someone. They exchange call signs, recording them to be verified later. There is no ‘prize’ as such, but the winners are announced and bragging rights will never end. :0) When we were watching and listening a couple of years ago, one man was talking to someone in Uruguay!

The work on my husband’s new-to-him antenna. He’s having a good friend come over and help him make the rotor work as it should this coming week. Meanwhile, he’s built the base it will sit on and is working on the complex 4-plex antenna that will sit on the top. When we were talking about it yesterday, I suggested we assemble the whole thing on the ground and then hire probably the smallest crane there is to come help the two guys pull the whole thing up and hold it while things are tightened, guy wires are hooked up, wiring is finished, etc. My husband thought about it for a bit and then said, “You know, that’s actually a good idea!” (I ignored the fact that he sounded surprised :0/)

I’m going to put my different style thermometer up in the greenhouse today, and plan to start some spaghetti squash seeds to see if they’ll make. I’m also planning to attack weed trees with a vengence – if the temperatures will stay at some reasonable level. If not, I’ll see what I can do this evening.

Just after we finished the main building of my greenhouse, my husband said that the former president of the Fort Smith Amateur Ham Radio Club had emailed him, saying that one of the members was selling a Rohn antenna. My husband said that if we tried to buy a used control box alone for one, we would pay what the man was asking for the control box, the “scaffolding” the rotor, and the stuff at the top.

I could see his mouth was watering, and he’s worked hard on his ham stuff – passing all three tests available and getting the main radio, and several different, much smaller antennas, none of which he could make work they way they should. People he had talked to in the club said, “It should be working,” but it wasn’t, in each case. He can reach the people for the weekly meeting, but he wants to really be able to USE it.

My husband had much the same look in his eyes that our new puppy, Amber, has when she wants a cookie really badly. So I caved, we called the man, got his address, programmed the GPS and drove to Alma, AR, about an hour or so away.

The 10 foot section parts (5 of them) had been on the ground in the back yard for quite awhile. The control box was in the man’s garage, and that was the main thing that needed protection. We bought the whole group of things, which my husband says is a Rohn antenna, put all the pieces in the back of the truck, tied them down securely and brought them home.

We spent awhile getting all the sections out near the place where the antenna will go. They’re heavy! We’ll need to measure to be sure the antenna is 45 feet away from the commercial power pole to the east of the house. It will be out somewhere around my greenhouse.

The first big thing – before I caved to the purchase – was that he would get REAL help – not just me – to get this thing up securely. We’ll need to hire the man who dug our water well 30 years ago – or whoever is handling that business now – to come drill a hole at least 6 feet deep. My husband says he’ll put a big, heavy pipe in the hole as the base for the antenna. We’ll mix Sac-Crete to put in the hole and around it for a pad on which the antenna will sit.

I insisted my husband call the head of the club back and ask if he knew people we could hire to put the antenna up. (This means someone skinny, strong, and agile enough to climb the antenna with another section in hand, hoist it up and add it to the one he’s standing on, and then do the same until the whole thing, including the rotor and the cable, plus the thingie that turns at the top, are together.) Then we need to install guy wires all around to be sure it’s secure. Happily, Mike knew two guys he called “The Johnson Twins,” who can do just that for us once we have the pad done.

My husband is like a kid at Christmas. There are a couple of places in the metal scaffolding that seem to have burst when water froze inside them. He’ll need to repair those, get enough of the proper 8-wire cable to go from the rotor on the antenna across the field to the house and into the house, attached to his radio and control hub. He’s happy. When we went for groceries this morning, the first thing he said was, “I’m happy we got the antenna.” :0)

It might not look like much to you, but this is beautiful, as far as we’re concerned.

Our good dirt and driveway guy, Eric, came over with his tractor today and smoothed our really bumpy driveway and then proceeded to clear land for the greenhouse my husband and I are going to build. It’s to the east of our house, on the extra 2 acre strip we bought to add to our land several years ago. It’s the only halfway level spot we have on our almost 8 acres of land…

The cleared space we need is supposed to be 15 feet x 15 feet in order for us to build a 12 foot x 14 foot greenhouse. The first step is to drill and then pound in the corner spikes. My husband cut 2 foot pieces of pipe, then we got big, heavy angle iron to weld onto the spikes, making corner posts to which we’ll attach the treated wood to make the perimeter of the greenhouse.

This is no small step. We had to use explosives in order to be able to dig our basement, put in our septic system, and prepare for the swimming pool we never built 30 years ago. We have a cement drill that we’ll use to drill holes down as far as possible. Then we’ll use a sledge-hammer to pound the spikes with angle iron into the ground.

My good friend Cathy wrote, telling me that she was worried about my trying to climb over the gate between the living room and the porch where our new puppy Amber is. She told me about a new style of gate that has a ‘people door!’ I had never heard of that, and after she helped me appreciate what I was seeing, I showed it to my husband, the installer of all things.

He was a bit worried because our door frames are steel, but he said we should go ahead and order it. It arrived today and we installed it within 10 minutes or less. My husband said, “You should tell this company they’re making a well thought out, well designed product.”

The product is from Chewy.com, a wonderful place that ships the product almost immediately. It’s astonishing how quickly things arrive. This is our third order from them, and I couldn’t recommend them more highly.

We didn’t need to use the two extensions that come with this gate. It installed quickly and easily with no tools required. It’s very sturdy. There is no place for Amber to hook her feet to climb over it. She can’t get under it. If she gets so she can climb over this 30″ tall gate, we can relocate it up a bit higher.

The very best part is the people door. We’ve fixed it so it opens OUT into the porch, so that Amber can’t open it by accident. When we go out there, she has to back up, and she isn’t quick enough to go between us and the door closing again. I’m really delighted. I don’t have to concentrate on standing on one foot, lifting the other foot over the gate (which Amber immediately latches onto), trying not to step on her as I put my foot down, then grabbing the door with one hand and bracing my other hand on the brick to the side of the door as I bring the 2nd leg up and over. It’s REALLY been fun when I had something in my hand…

THANK YOU, Cathy, for

worrying about me and figuring out a good solution

letting me know about it

writing back to point out the people door I didn’t see and appreciate the first time

your patience and caring

I can’t tell you how happy we are with you and the new gate. NOW – if we could get Amber to quit barking and whining….

We moved to Greenwood, Arkansas about 30 years ago. We wanted to build an earth-sheltered, bermed home with a Southern exposure, built right into the hillside, open to the south to take advantage of passive solar heat. My husband traveled around most every day after work, trying to find our land. He finally found this land, a parcel of about 8 acres on top of a ridge line.

When he first showed it to me, it was about 104 degrees F. There was no way up to the top of the ridge line, except for walking, which we did, through fairly dense, very rocky land. When we got to the top, I was gasping for air. Of course, we didn’t think of bringing water with us. I thought my husband had lost his mind. I could see very little difference between what we had seen at the road in front of the place and the top of the hill, where he proposed we build our home. I would eat my words when the bulldozers cleared the land for our home. My husband had much more vision than I.

We had FHA approved plans for a two-story dome into the hill-side, with a tunnel that led to a one-story dome completely underground. The top of the dome would be above ground, covered almost completely with grass, which we would mow. The south exposure would be open, looking out into the valley. It would be super efficient, cost little to cool or heat. We were really excited. After talking to everyone who built homes anywhere around here, we finally had to give up our idea. No one would seriously talk to us, and they all priced the home so high we couldn’t afford it, and THEN added a rock clause to the top of that – basically saying the estimate on the house didn’t mean anything. We started over, looking at the insides of houses, looking for the features we wanted, and built the house that fit our needs the best.

We had to BLAST for our basement, our septic system, and the pool we wanted, but never actually built. The rock clause was necessary.

I don’t really know how far we can see from our deck. I know we can watch the seasons change in the valley, watch the storms roll in, enjoy all the different colors, and even firework displays of our neighbors in the valley, pretending we own all we can see.

We’ve built our own little world here, and have already enjoyed it for 30 years. We feel we’re just getting started.

Like this:

(1) Our hummingbird bird bath is proving to be quite a challenge. We’ve tried several different approaches to getting the water to circulate, but not leak. Today we installed a regular toilet float valve in the trashcan under the bird bath. we hooked everything up, smiled, and then frowned again because it was leaking from the flapper valve in the tub. We have again drained it, leaving all the rest of the system intact. We’re going to spray all around the flapper valve with FlexSeal – the stuff on TV that’s supposed to repair holes in boats, etc., to see if that will solve our problem. We’re also going to shorten the flexible hose we have that goes from the bottom of the tub to the trash can. We’ll let the FlexSeal dry, and then we’ll test the system again. We’re SO close to having something that we can set and forget – except for extreme enjoyment. Fingers crossed!

(2) I’m trying to dye some pillowcases. I found a gloriously deep purple fabric dye. Instead of being able to do the whole process in the washer, as I did once before, we had to boil water, pour it into a large bucket, add salt and dissolve, then add the dye and dissolve. We then put in the pillowcases one at a time, submerging each. The directions say to keep stirring constantly for 15 minutes, then stir every 10 minutes for another 45 minutes. I feel as if we’re making witches brew! They said to use eye protection and wear gloves. When the 45 minutes is over, I’ll put the bucket in the sink, squeeze each pillow case out into the bucket, and then rinse in cold water while my husband dumps the rest of the dye and water. Then they go into the washer and dryer.

And why am I doing this? We have little bitty foam contoured travel pillows we use on our bed. My husband won’t use anything else. The pillow cases for them are EXPENSIVE. When they got stained, I dyed them, but the only color I could find was pink. Needless to say, we’ve been putting up with them, rather than enjoying them, for longer than we would like. I decided to give them new life by dying them a color that would go with our bedding and preferences better. If this works, we’ll be in good shape for our extra little pillows for quite awhile. (Meanwhile, I’m setting the timer for 10 minutes and stirring the cases around with a large stick of PVC pipe.) I’ve done three of the four times now. Fingers crossed on this project, too!

(3) The other project we hope to tackle today is getting our new-to-us riding lawn mower working. Rain is forecast for tomorrow, so it would be really good if we could get the civilized part of our yard looking like someone cares. I’ll be a go-fer while my husband uses his smarts to get it going, figure out how it works, and then teaches me, too.

I’m still healing from having a wisdom tooth pulled Monday, so I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be functional. The horrendous pain is gone, but I still have aching jaws and a headache. Other than that, I feel as if I were run over by a truck. Since I was ready for the dentist to shoot me to put me out of my misery Monday morning, I’m very grateful to ONLY have aching and a headache. Small price to pay for the wonderful work of our dentist.

By the way, if you’re in the Fort Smith, Arkansas area, you couldn’t find a better dental service. His name is Wesley Moore, DDS. Moore Dental Care, 2913 S. 74th St. Fort Smith, AR72903. (479) 484-5050.

When I change the water in my fish, Sally’s, bowl, I like to change the decoration. I was tired of the ones I’ve been using, and so was looking around to see if I had anything else that would brighten Sally’s life.

I have two soap dishes that I love. One is a man in a tub and the other, a woman. I have the man beside the kitchen sink. I had the woman upstairs beside my sink in the master bath. I brought it down, cleaned it up and put it into the fish bowl.

Sally has been swimming around, sniffing at her new digs. I think she likes having a mermaid in her bowl.

I only had one birthday recently, but the celebrating continues! Each year I give myself a birthday present – something I love that I don’t need. This year I found a new website called, VIPME.COM. I splurged and ordered FOUR necklaces!

I love statement necklaces. I particularly love costume jewelry because I don’t have to worry about someone mugging me to get my ‘jewels,’ or agonizing if the jewelry doesn’t last forever. I would rather have a lot of different pieces to wear than one more expensive piece. I love all four of these.

The very best part was that I paid $20 for ALL of these together! Happy Birthday to me….. :0)

I told you we bought a used riding mower this week. The seller helped us get it into the back of the truck. My husband said, “Here, hold this,” while he got the strap with a built-in ratchet to work to tie the mower to the truck securely. (The back of the truck was open since the mower more than filled the truck bed.)

We got it home and then tried to figure out how to get the mower OUT of the truck without hurting it, or causing one or both of us grievous harm. I was really anxious about the situation. My husband should have married a combination weight lifter/football player/basketball player to be of adequate help to him on things like this. I’m simply not tall enough or burly enough to be of much help.

I had been up the night before, having bad dreams about getting the mower out of the truck. I dreamed that it was MY job to place the metal tracks so that my husband could back the mower down to the ground from the back of the truck. In my dream, I suddenly realized the tracks were misplaced. My husband tried to back the mower onto the tracks, ending up on the ground UNDER the mower, bleeding profusely, with me trying to figure out how to get the mower OFF of him and him to an emergency room. (I may be admitting to you that I’m mental, since I find myself in this type of situation often and my imagination goes wild each time.)

In actuality, we placed the tracks in the proper place. My husband got chocks (the plastic things that you put against your tires to keep them from rolling when you’re jacking up your vehicle.) We then put the mower in neutral and ‘walked’ it down out of the truck, 6 inches at a time on one wheel at a time to be held securely by the chocks, until the mower was down far enough we could let it roll the rest of the way.

The best ideas I could come up with on my own were –

leave it in the truck until we could get two burly guys over here to help us, or

put the truck in the middle of the yard. Place the tracks. Put the mower in neutral and start it down the tracks. Get out-of-the-way and let it go, hoping for the best.

My husband always has to – in effect – do all things like this by himself. I’m a willing helper, but you can see we’re not exactly on the same wave length on if things are possible at all, and how we should do them. I also am a regular old lady who doesn’t have a lot of strength. Each time he thinks things out, coming up with several ways we can do whatever it is we need to do. He says we also could have rigged a rope to let the mower down slowly.

Thank goodness I’m affiliated with a person who has such clear thinking and general smarts! It’s ‘magical’ to me.

I read it and cried. I bookmarked the site and subscribed because the post was so well-written and down-to-earth about things and people in the south. (This is amazing because I’m a Northerner.) Every day I have one post in my inbox. And every day the post grabs me. I can’t help but react. I smile, relating to something he says. I tear up because he tells me about good things people do. I laugh out loud because he’s a real story-teller and I can SEE the funny situation and relate because it’s so true.

We still have a ‘land line’ at home, although technically it’s a cell phone with a fixed base. We have this because a lot of our long time financial stuff likes this information, plus really long time friends and relatives are familiar with this number.

We get a LOT of phone calls we don’t want on it – several per day – always in the middle of something we’re trying to do. We stop what we’re doing, answer it, to find no one else on the line, or an obvious robocall, or an obvious ‘wait-until-someone-answers-says-hello-twice-and-then-a-pickup-and-sales-pitch.” The disruption of whatever we’re trying to do is more than annoying, causing frayed nerves, bad moods, intemperate words, as well as a lot of time for us to regain composure and figure out what it was we were trying to do when the call came in and get back to the place we stopped.

After several months of beating his head against the wall, my smart husband bent a new computer language (Asterisk) to his will and created a phone answering system that we’re hopeful will stop most of the crank calls while allowing the people we want to hear from to call without noticing anything different.

We created a list of people and numbers from whom we would like to hear, (using three address books, our Christmas card list, and both contacts lists from our computers) and then a shorter list of people from whom we NEVER want to hear. The new system will check its lists and decide whether to let it ring through as usual, give a message, “If you’re human and you’re not selling something, press 1”,at which point it will ring through (assuming the person pressed 1), or will give you a message, “Don’t call us anymore!” and then hangs up the phone without our hearing anything. We’ll add to our good and bad lists as calls come in.

We have it on line now. I was talking about how it might be difficult to know if the phone system is actually working or not, since it’s been quiet all morning! My husband answered that we could look at it ‘from a hysterical perspective’ and see if anyone is on the call log. I fell apart laughing. When I told my husband that he’d said, “hysterical” rather than “historical,” he had a good laugh, as well. :0)

I’ve decided that this is too good to just forget, so the next time I ask him to check the log, I’ll ask for the HYSTERICAL perspective…

One of my really good friends here surprised and delighted me with a kindness awhile back. I thanked her profusely, telling her how much it meant to me. Her answer surprised me, and – frankly – changed the way I look at things.

She told me she looks for kind things she can do for others every day. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – smiling at a stranger, opening a door for someone, carrying a package to the car for someone, picking up something dropped and returning it, thanking someone sincerely when they don’t expect it….

The big thing to me is the different way you look at life when you have the idea of kindness in your heart. It’s a much more proactive way of looking at everything, and everyone you meet. It’s a small – but vital – difference that takes little or no time, just awareness and a willingness to see and do.

I’m so glad my friend opened my eyes to the small kindnesses I can do each day!

Like this:

I remarked to my husband while we were out shopping this morning that I thought we should get new dishes every 50 years. Happily, he agreed!

He chose our first set of crockery, so I chose this today. We got 8 place settings of dinner plate, lunch plate, square bowl, and coffee mug. I just love ’em! (For some reason, the dishes catch the light just right to make it LOOK like there are white specks on the plates. There aren’t.) The turquoise/gold/brown combination is nicely eye-popping, and I like the square plates and bowls. They actually look handmade, so I love that, as well.

Our purchase required that we get rid of the old dishes, so we’ve been packing them up the rest of the day. We have 4 place settings of the new dishes in the dishwasher and the other 4 settings on the counter now, waiting to go into the dishwasher. While we were packing things up to be donated to the Veterans Thrift Store in Fort Smith, I went through my cabinets and found lots of things I don’t use anymore and we packed those up, as well.